Google+ Opens Wide With "+You" Promotion

A frontpage promotion on Google with an animated blue arrow pointing to a new “+You” tab heralds the beginning (perhaps!) of the Google+ golden age, a social network Pax Romana of sorts, and a welcome sensible alternative for those who are sick of Facebook’s antics — and its never-ending quest to make its site more “sticky” (meaning you can never leave).

Finally, Google+ is open to the world. You no longer need an email invite link from a friend already on the service in order to join.

Also, as Wired News points out in a blog post, “The announcement comes just days before Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference and seems clearly aimed as a shot across the social network giant’s bow.”

Google+ is not being very subtle. But it doesn’t need to be.

As I’ve written about here and elsewhere in the past, Google+ is simply a better mousetrap than Facebook and LinkedIn. The quality of discourse is better. The use of “circles” instead of “friends” is a brilliant evolution in the etiquette of online networking. And people are friendly on there. Open, intelligent, and thoughtful. Mostly.

For me, the excitement has worn off, and I don’t post on Google+ constantly as I did during my first few weeks there. But it probably says something that Google+ is the only social network I can tolerate. (I deactivated my Facebook account after switching to Google+, deciding to go “all-in” on the fledgling network. And I never jumped on the Twitter bandwagon; if I wanted to be limited to 140 characters, I would have never become a writer.)